‘I am a stranger:’ Becoming RuthRuth is a stranger in more senses than one. Who is this unknown woman who is destined to become mother of royalty? What is the process by which she finds her way into a foreign and unwelcoming culture and religious tradition? How does destiny come about? To be held at Easton Hall, 2401 Ridge Road, Berkeley CA 94709 from 9:00AM-11:30AM.

The stories of Noah and Jonah share a remarkable number of details, including: water, boats, a divinely-decreed catastrophe, and a prophet's desperate need to escape. These comparisons will lead us to a surprising inverse relationship between the stories, including opposing views on the question: is it really possible for human beings to change?

Naomi Seidman, Koret Professor of Jewish Culture and Director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies, received an invitation to Warsaw by Anna Cialowicz, the Polish translator of Hillel Seidman's “Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto.” Hillel was a Jewish historian, Yiddish journalist, and community activist, in addition to being Naomi's late father. The diary will be published in Poland this spring, coinciding with the seventieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish revolt of World War II.